(S)he Takes After You
by FourthDistraction
Summary: Maka and Soul look at their children and see pieces of themselves, and others. SoMa, slight hints of TsuStar. Connected to my Rising Stars and Full Circles universe, but can stand alone.


**A/N:** This little one-shot is based on the world of my Soul Eater fic _Rising Stars and Full Circles._ You don't _need_ to read the fic to understand this story, but reading the fic will make you more familiar with the characters discussed here, so you'll probably get a little more out of this if you've read that fic. That said, this one-shot is more about Maka and Soul than it is about their children, so it's not necessary. If you do read this and decide you want to know more about the SoMa kids, _Rising Stars_ puts them in the spotlight (without forgetting about Maka and Soul, of course).

Word of warning, there are slight spoilers in this for _Rising Stars_ , mostly involving certain…er…bloodlines. Nothing too overt, though.

For people who _have_ read _Rising Stars_ , this came up because of an idea I had that was too long to be an omake and didn't fit as its own chapter, especially not if you consider what's happening in the story right now. Consider it a break from the action, and a way for me to post something without having to wait for my beta reader to catch up (oh, yeah, btw, this hasn't been beta'd, so if you spot mistakes, be nice. In particular, my mind can't seem to wrap its head around Rei being male, so if I call him 'she'…well….)

 **Disclaimer:** I don't own _Soul Eater._

* * *

 **(S)he Takes After You**

* * *

It was a game they couldn't help playing every now and then, whenever they found themselves watching their children from afar, taking note of the people they were becoming. They'd look at their kids, watch them as they went about their lives, and inevitably they would start calling out behaviors that obviously had been inherited from one or the other. It was a little bit of harmless fun, idle conversation really, but Maka wondered sometimes if there wasn't more to those moments. If they didn't, in some ways, stem from a place of awe, a place of utter amazement that the children that had been nothing more than ideas fifteen or sixteen or twenty years ago had become people all of their own, people who they could sometimes see themselves in with startling clarity but who also had moments of uniqueness that were nothing short of amazing.

And Maka wondered sometimes, as she found herself doing this, whether her parents had ever done the same thing, whether her father had ever stopped to look at her when she was growing up and thought about the ways in which she resembled her mother and the ways in which she didn't.

* * *

Rei was fourteen years old and growing older every day.

He was a student in the DWMA's E.A.T. class, in Maka's homeroom no less, which meant that despite his moving into a DWMA apartment at the age of thirteen, she still had a lot of opportunities to watch him, to see the traits in him that she had always known about and the ones that were new, the ones that were still showing themselves one after another. Which was why she felt confident, standing on the DWMA's balcony with Soul and watching her son as he sat on the grass of the training forest with his teammates, eating lunch in the shade of a tree with a book in one hand, that she knew exactly who Rei took after.

"That's you," she said, glancing at Soul. "That's all you."

Soul snorted, shaking his head. "It's so not," he said. "That whole bookworm thing, that team leader thing, that's you."

Maka shook her head. There were some traits that her son inherited from her. He liked to read, he was a meister, he had Soul Perception. He did well in class and was his team's leader. He had a tendency to worry, to take responsibility for things that were in no way his fault, to drive himself crazy spinning possible scenarios over and over again inside his head. Those were her traits, but all in all, they maybe made up about twenty percent of Rei.

The rest was Soul all over.

"He has some of me," she conceded. "But he's mostly you."

Soul didn't respond, watching the group below him. He seemed to think about it for a moment, his eyes on Rei, before he let out a long breath of air, relenting.

"Yeah, I know," he said, and then, "Poor kid."

"What's so bad about that?" Maka asked, eyeing him sidelong. "You have a lot of good traits."

"Oh, really?" Soul asked. "Like what?"

Maka pretended to think about it for a moment. "Well…" she said. "You're loyal. You're always there, in the background, ready to support or protect us. You're good with the kids."

"Are you describing me or a puppy?" Soul asked, making a face.

Maka let out a startled laugh, nudging Soul hard in the side. "Shut up," she said. "I'm trying to compliment you here."

"Yeah," he said, reaching out and slipping an arm around her shoulders. He drew her close, and there was a slightly embarrassed flush on his cheek as she rested her head on his chest, leaning against him. "I know."

Maka smiled, taking his other hand in her own. He didn't look at her, but he didn't pull his hand away, and she turned to look back at Rei. Her son had put his book down on the grass, and was staring at his partner with shocked outrage as she laughed at him loudly, the blue-haired girl pointing at the bento box he had accidentally upended onto the front of his uniform jacket. She watched as Rei scowled at her, as he blushed furiously, as Ayame Star paused in her laughing fit for long enough to hand him napkins to wipe himself off with, before promptly bursting into laughter again.

"He's completely in love with her," Maka heard herself say.

"Head over heels," Soul agreed, shaking his head. "He's toast."

Maka sighed, leaning into Soul, feeling the arm around her shoulders drawing her in closer, feeling his hand tighten in hers as she did. She let her eyes fall closed, savoring the moment.

"That's you," she said.

Soul didn't argue with that.

* * *

If it was easy to look at Rei and say with near-certainty that over half of his personality had come from his father, his sisters were a different story, and Anima Evans was the most difficult to place of all. Maybe it was the fact that she and her twin sister were only eight, maybe it was the fact that the challenges that Annie had to go through were challenges that neither Maka nor Soul had had to face at that age, or maybe it was just that Annie's personality, the glimpses of it that they did get a chance to see, was often masked by her almost painful shyness and tendency to withdraw into the background.

Either way, she was a puzzling enigma.

"You," Soul said, watching from a distance as Annie sat on a bench in the park, flipping through the book in her hands while the other kids played not too far away from her.

"Me?" Maka asked, looking up at Soul. "What makes you think she takes after me?"

"Just look at her," Soul said, gesturing in Annie's direction with his chin. "Reading while all of the other kids play outside. That's you, bookworm."

"I was never _that_ shy, though," Maka said, grinning. "That's definitely you."

"Hey, I was never _shy_ ," said Soul. "I just never really liked crowds, that's all."

"Sure," said Maka, smiling at him. "And that's why you still run off and hide every time we go to a party."

"I don't like crowds," said Soul. "A party is a crowd."

"Annie doesn't like crowds either," said Maka. "So face it, Annie takes after you."

"But that thing she does when people are acting crazy around her?" asked Soul. "When she sort of stands to the side and gives them that look that says 'I'm judging you and totally disapprove of the way you're living your life'? That's definitely you."

Maka poked him in the side. "Hey, I don't _judge_ people," she said.

"Tell that to your dad," said Soul, rubbing at his side with a scowl.

"Well that's different," said Maka, letting out a huff.

Soul frowned but didn't answer, turning to watch Annie. Her feet were dangling over the edge of the bench, kicking backwards and forwards in the air, and she was slumped over slightly as if she was trying not to be noticed, her long white hair falling around her face like a curtain as she leaned over her book. He watched her for a few long moments before he spoke.

"Maka…" he said, his voice tentative. "This might be a little weird, but does Annie ever…remind you of someone else?"

Maka exhaled sharply at his side, looking up at him. "You too?" she asked. "I thought it was just me."

"It's kind of creepy, actually, if you think about it," said Soul.

"Right?" asked Maka. "I mean…they're not related. At all."

"Well, she does have his blood," Soul pointed out. "What?" he added, when Maka raised her head to stare at him. "She does—actually—have his blood."

"Which she got from _you_ ," Maka pointed out.

"Which I got from _him_ ," said Soul.

The two of them stared at each other for a few long moments before Soul exhaled, looking away.

"Alright, this is weird," he said, scratching at the back of his head. "Moving on to Cori?"

Maka nodded quickly. "Agreed."

* * *

Corpore Evans, in Soul's opinion, was _much_ easier to pin down.

"You," Soul said, glancing at Maka over the heads of the group of screaming, laughing children that had invaded their backyard for Cori and Annie's ninth birthday party. "You, you, you, you... _you_."

"Alright, alright," said Maka, frowning at him. "You've made your point. Why do you think Cori takes after me?"

"Just look at her," said Soul, gesturing at his daughter with the can of soda in his hand. Physically, Cori resembled her sister in every way, the same snow white hair and green eyes, the same ability to transform into a bladed implement of death. Personality-wise, the two of them couldn't have been more different. Cori was standing in the middle of a group of her friends, a grin on her face and a party hat on her head.

"Overachiever, gets ticked off easily when you tease her, always has to be right, plans out her life and the life of everyone around her, won't break the rules unless you dare her to because she _can't back down from a challenge_ , determined, incredibly brave, annoyingly stubborn, and oh hey, did we mention the part where she told an evil witch hell-bent on taking over the world to _piss off_?"

"That's not _all_ me," said Maka, flushing slightly.

"That is _so_ all you," said Soul.

"She has some of you too," Maka insisted. "She has your smile."

"She has my _teeth_ ," Soul said. "Not the same thing."

"Well, she's good at music," said Maka. "That's not me."

Soul snorted. "She's an overachiever at music too. Although…" he added, frowning slightly as he took a sip of his soda, "…that whole rock star thing she's got going on…I'm not sure who she gets it from, but it's pretty epic."

"Not me," said Maka, shaking her head. "Your side of the family maybe?"

Soul shook his head. "Like any of those stiffs would even touch an electric guitar. And come to think of it…" He paused, glancing at Cori again. Two of the kids she was talking to laughed at something she said, and she leaned over to hook an arm around the shoulders of a boy that was trying to sneak out of the circle, drawing him back in and giving the others a goofy grin. "…She's kind of the life of the party, isn't she? I mean, I just noticed that now, but…"

"You're right," said Maka, frowning suspiciously at Cori. "That's…not me."

"It's not me either," said Soul.

"She's loud," said Maka.

"Reckless," added Soul.

"She won't _break_ the rules, but give her an inch of wiggle room and she'll bend them whenever it's convenient…"

"That goofy grin…"

"I mean, she's got a good heart," said Maka.

"The best," said Soul, nodding.

"But…" Maka began.

"Yeah," said Soul. "Who…?"

The two of them looked around, eyes landing on the group of people assembled for the children's party. They passed over Rei and Ayame, passed Annie talking shyly to a girl her age near the table of food, passed over the groups of friends who were so close that they were practically family, and landed on a man grinning as he faced a group of younger kids, crouching down to their level with the same smile that was currently on Cori's face. His red hair was more white than it was red now, and there were more lines on his face, but overall, Spirit Albarn hadn't really changed. He still spent quite a few evenings at Chupa Cabra, still vacillated between being a responsible (semi-retired) Death Scythe and finding new creative ways to slack off, still attempted to shower his daughter (and grandchildren) with overly exuberant affection, much to their embarrassment and occasional disgust.

Soul exhaled sharply through his teeth.

"Shit," he said, taking a long sip of soda.

"My sentiments exactly," said Maka.


End file.
